Molly has a cow dress in her closet.
It’s been hanging there since before she was born. Black and white checked, with a large cow face appliquéd on the front, and flouncy, cow-print ribbons stitched onto each shoulder.
It was a gift from her
Great-Grandma Squeakie.
The weather could have been
anything the day after Molly was born. I
wouldn’t have known. She was born in the
late evening, and the days leading up to her birth had been long. It was after midnight when we arrived at our
maternity suite. Molly was swaddled and
sleeping in her bassinet and Ryan and I were making preparations to settle into
sleep ourselves when the maternity nurse came in for a visit. When I told her I planned to breastfeed, she matter-of-factly
replied, “well have you?” I had not. I
didn’t know it was officially time to start. It was indeed, she told me. And so we did that. “I’ll come wake you in two
hours,” she told Ryan and me. I felt like once I closed my eyes I would sleep
for two days (or months, or years), “because she will be hungry again
then.” And so in two hours she was back
again. And then again. And again. Newborns have stomachs the size of a walnut,
or green pea, or something tiny like that.
I don’t remember what the
weather was like outside, but I know the room was still lit with the white
light of early morning when there was a knock on the door. I was bleary and tangled in my pajamas and
thin hospital bed sheets. I felt I had
hardly closed my eyes since our last visit from the nurse, and yet here she was
knocking again. Except it wasn’t her. It
was my Aunt Sandra and Grandma Squeak.
The nurse was on their heels and slid past them as they entered the
room. “Is it ok?” she asked me, “they
showed up, it’s so early, I didn’t know.”
It was ok. I remember placing
Molly in my grandmother’s arms, and for the first time thinking of all of the
babies she’d held. Later, with some of
my friends, I’d have to say things like, “you sort of go like this,” and
position their arms, then remind them to support her head before handing Molly
over to them, but my Grandmother, like so many mothers, knew just how to hold a
newborn. Molly didn’t startle, or fuss,
she didn’t even wake. Instead she slept
soundly in the secure curve of my grandmother’s arm, her tiny body pressed
against the soft velour of her purple track suit.
She had brought gifts of
course. Four diaper covers with brightly
colored flowers stitched to the behinds.
Grandma Squeakie’s gifts never blended in. In the years she bought me elephants there
were figurines made of blown glass, or bejeweled ones that clicked open to silk
lined caverns where you could store pennies or secrets. There was one with a
long curved trunk for holding rings, and there were carved elephants with
brightly painted eyes and ears and feet.
There was never a simple grey elephant.
That wasn’t her style. And my grandmother had style to spare.
Molly is growing fast. If I put it on her, the cow dress would
probably just fit. But I don’t put it on
her. Molly quickly got the hang of
nursing, and so she has outgrown the flowered diaper covers my Grandmother
brought to the hospital. She has also
outgrown the whale and strawberry outfits her great-grandmother Squeakie picked
out for her. This dress, the cow dress,
will be her, and my, last gift from Squeak.
She’d given me the dress at my baby shower. For her
to wear on the farm, Grandma Squeak had written on the card in wobbly
cursive. A farm girl herself, I doubted
my grandmother had ever worn a dress such as this in the fields. Pictures show her barefoot and in overalls,
sitting atop the combine.
In the weeks after Molly’s
birth, my Grandma Squeakie passed away.
There was a ride to the hospital in an ambulance, and a late night,
where everyone came to visit. Molly came
too, though she stayed in the car with her Papa, because she was still so
little, and hospitals can be a dangerous place for a little girl with a brand
new immune system. At the hospital we
reminisced, and my grandmother said things like, “Sandra I don’t think I will
be able to go to the dump with you tomorrow,” (as they had planned), “we’ll
have to go on Saturday.” For the next
few days everyone came to see her in the hospital. The same as they had when she had her hip
replacements in the years before. And
then, on the third day, after an evening of telling jokes (“repaint, repaint,
and thin no more!), she passed away.
Sara, my mother, and I
visited our god-mother Marcey recently. Marcey has always had a fondness for
butterflies, and when we were there, she showed us the many things that my
grandmother had designated for her to receive.
Things like a butterfly teapot, dish towels, a creamer (which my
grandmother collected), a cup and saucer.
Later, an elephant arrived for me.
Small, and filled with beans, a child’s toy, unlike any she had ever
given me before—an elephant for Molly.
It was soft, and traditional: a simple grey elephant. With enormous, bright pink, ears.
And though ruffled and
cow-printed, or once again elephant-shaped, these are the two last things my
grandmother picked for me (or for Molly, who is of me). And I know it isn’t in the things-- it’s
never in the things, but it’s in the moment, her thinking of Molly and me, the
way I thought of her when I pulled a bouquet of flowers for her at the
supermarket, always choosing the brightest colors, because those were always
the ones she seemed to like the best.
